🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par